An animal arrangement for housing large stocks of milking animals, e.g. hundreds or even thousands of milking animals, may comprise resting and feeding areas wherein the milking animals are allowed to rest and are fed, and a milking area housing a plurality of milking positions for milking the milking animals.
Typically, very large stocks of milking animals are milked batch wise in for example parallel stall, Herringbone, or rotary milking systems at predetermined periods of times.
Voluntary milking systems for fully automated milking are well known in the art. They have typically been implemented for smaller herds of animals, i.e. up to 100 milking animals, in housed environments. However, when milking large stocks of milking animals automatically in voluntary milking systems some problems arise.
Voluntary milking does, however, not guarantee that each milking animal is milked at least two or three times per day, particularly not at least two or three times per day with regular milking intervals. Farmers that milk their milking animals three times per day in a batch wise milking system and that switch to voluntary milking may suffer from a milk production loss of larger than 5% due to fewer number of milkings per day and more irregular milking intervals.
Another problem encountered in automatic animal arrangements housing large stocks of milking animals is the difficulties in obtaining high milking machine utilization. This problem is particularly noticeable in very large arrangements partitioned in different sections, and which have a large number of milking robots for milking.
Yet another problem encountered is that it is more difficult to monitor and control the milking animals and their movements.
Still another problem arises when a particular milking animal, which for example has to be treated manually by the farmer, shall be found. Even if the milking animals are housed in different sections it may be troublesome and time consuming to find the particular milking animal.